CASTAGNOTTI

Combine the butter, sugar, cinnamon, vanilla and salt in the bowl . Mix with the hand held mixer (or with a fork ) until the batter is soft and pale. After that add the flours and mix to incorporate.
Using your hands mix the dough until you get a cohesive, lump free mass that should be quite pliable.

Divide into 24 equal sized balls. ( It’s ok to have some smaller or larger too. Chestnuts don’t come in one size only. ) Subsequently, with your fingers shape each ball like a teardrop, then flatten the bottom, like a chestnut. The Castagnotti are now ready to be baked!

Place the Castagnotti on the top part of the oven and bake for about 12 minutes to 15 minutes.

DO NOT try to remove them at this point, they WILL CRUMBLE in a million pieces. In fact, you should totally let them cool before attempting to transfer them to a cooling rack like in the picture above.

Alternatively, you could wait about 5 minutes and lift them carefully with a small off set spatula.

While the Castagnotti are cooling , melt the chocolate.
I use a double boiler or a microwave. Once the chocolate has melted let if cool lightly before glazing the cookies which should be as close as possible to room temperature, at this point.

In order to coat each cookie, I placed the melted chocolate in a piping bag with a tiny opening, then drew the horizontal line above the flat part of the bottom. (see first chestnut on the top left in the picture below) then filled the rest with the chocolate.
Finally, let drain the excess chocolate by placing the Castagnotti on a cooling rack.

One last step: if you feel like being an overachiever, you could paint each cookie with edible paint in small vertical motions. I used some edible glitter.

There! You are ready to dish up the best kept secret holiday cookies: Castagnotti.
Cheers!!